Creating custom palettes

It is often very useful to create custom palettes, some to use on a regular basis and others just for a particular picture or project. Here is a quick guide to creating a custom palette with a variety of shortcuts.

Select a brush variant from the brush selector, click on the variant icon and drag it out into the main workspace. A custom menu will be immediately created as in Figure 1.16; you can now add further items to the palette. Select a brush from another brush category, drag that onto your new custom palette, and position it to the right of the original icon.

The icon can be positioned anywhere on the custom palette, alongside or below. If you want to re-arrange the icons hold down the shift key and drag the icon to where you want it to be. To delete an icon hold down the Shift key and drag the icon off the palette.

Figure 1.15

Useful palettes to keep on screen.

Figure 1.15

Useful palettes to keep on

Custom 7

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Custom palette.

Figure 1.16

Custom palette.

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Now add a paper texture, open the Papers palette or use the quick icons in the Toolbox and drag the paper icon from the palette onto the Custom palette.

Menu commands can also be added, go to Window> Custom Palette> Add Command and the dialog box shown in Figure 1.17 appears, select the name of the palette you are working on. To add the Tracing Paper command, go to Canvas> Tracing Paper then return to the Add Command palette and click OK, the shortcut will appear on the new palette.

To delete or rename custom palettes go to Window> Custom Palettes> Organizer, highlight the palette you want to change and click the relevant button. Painter will remember this palette each time you open the program but to save a really useful palette permanently it can be saved as a file by pressing Export. The Import button will add palettes previously saved. Figure 1.18 shows an example of a Custom palette fully created.

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